The Post-Major Shuffle Season – Which Teams To Look For After Roster Changes?

After every CS:GO Major, the entire scene enters in a different atmosphere. Fans of teams that underperformed in the said event hopefully wait for a big announcement coming from their favorite teams. Players and organizations start teasing moves. Reports and rumors are the hot topic.

This time is no different and as IEM Katowice 2019 has reached its end, with Astralis being crowned by the third time, many teams did meaningful changes. So, which teams will be starting anew with a changed roster? Let’s take a look at that now!

NRG brings spiciness to their roster with Tarik

For the first time ever in NRG’s history, the team managed to qualify for a CSGO Major . Initially, all was going very well for the North Americans, until the second stage of the Major happened.

NRG bombed out of the Major in the New Legends Stage. Losing to NiP, AVANGAR and compLexity, NRG was sent home in the second day of said stage. It was time to do a change, and it didn’t take long to come.

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What does Tarik bring for this NRG iteration?

Tarik was the best North American player available before the player shuffle. Experienced, tarik can carry his weight as far as raw fragging skills goes and is also very intelligent player.

Adding him, more than anything adds invaluable experience to NRG, which is a fairly new team to the top tier of competition. However, it’s important to remember that he is replacing FugLy, a support role player.

‘Daps’, NRG in-game leader will definitely have to make sure to not bring any role conflict to NRG. After all, it would be a waste of both Tarik and NRG talents at this point.

Still, Tarik experience will at least add another backbone to NRG foundation, something that they lacked and led them to be eliminated early in the Major.

Concluding, there’s definitely a fanfare around this move, and it’s with a good reason. Tarik can be the missing piece in NRG puzzle that will make them compete head-to-head with Liquid for NA’s first place.

Mousesports reportedly revamp their roster

When the world watched Mousesports getting eliminated from the Europe Minor by Valiance, it was clear that changes were coming. They’re now here and the excitement to see how this new Mouz lineup will work is growing by the day.

For starters, Mouz rumored benched STYKO and ChrisJ to bring in Karrigan and a player that was unrevealed by then. Shortly after, reports coming from trustworthy sources, including HLTV reported that Mouz reverted ChrisJ benching and more.

Basically, we will be seeing STYKO, oskar and SuNNy out of Mouz from now on. In their places, ChrisJ will be kept, along with the additions of Karrigan, woxic and frozen.

Will Mousesports come on top after those likely changes?

It’s hard to not be hopeful of a team with Karrigan and ChrisJ. After all, Karrigan, who led FaZe Clan for the past two years is a veteran, and ChrisJ has his fair share of experience by now.

What is most exciting yet is the addition of frozen and woxic. Along ‘ropz’, frozen was one of the ‘for the future’ prospects and he has been proving that he is among the best up and coming talents from Europe.

Woxic in the other hand has made a name for himself from his time in HellRaisers. He was consistently head-to-head to ISSAA as the best player of that team.

However, not everything is going perfectly for Mouz. With SuNNy leaving, they lost their star and it will be hard to replace him.

After all, while frozen is promising, he is unproven. ChrisJ, however, will be off the role of main IGL and probably will ease ropz duties in-game, allowing him to also focus in fragging.

Overall, this move is a promising one, but at the same time, there’s a chance of it going very wrongly for Mouz. After all, Mouz is putting their money in Ropz and Frozen working as a duo, if it will work or not, only time will tell.

G2 finally replaces bodyy

Like Deadfox and STYKO, players that supposedly were doing a lot of work out of the game to compensate their lack of in-game firepower, Alexandre ‘bodyy’ Pianaro is now benched from his team.

In his place, G2 announced last week that one of the most promising players from France after ZywOo, François ‘AmaNEk’ Delaunay will be joining their roster. While a single move, adding AmaNEk could mean a lot for G2.

Can G2 return to their glory with the help of AmaNEk?

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When superficially analyzing this move, there basically is no counter-points or negative notes to see. AmaNEk plays smartly, has the firepower needed, and has some level of experience as he already played for the 2017’s international iteration of Misfits.

In-depth, it just turns out how big this can be for G2. Bodyy was performing mediocrely in LAN, averaging a 0.97 rating according to HLTV in the past 12 months. Even in 2017, when G2 was amongst the best in the world, bodyy had a pretty low rating of 1.03.

In the same period of time, in 2017, AmaNEk averaged a very decent rating of 1.12 in LANs. Mostly important of all, he was a big piece of Misfits and then LDLC in 2018 breakthroughs.

Is he the perfect player then? In the paper, he is a great replacement for bodyy, an improvement in every level. Still, the French scene can be a quite problematic one. If there was another personality clash to happen, it would be at G2.

Personality clash or not, considering which players were available, G2 did the right move.

Cloud9 see the light at the end of the tunnel

Fortunately for Cloud9, their appearance at the IEM Katowice 2019 Major was a pretty decent one. Unfortunately, they didn’t reach the New Champions Stage, instead they just guaranteed their spot for the next Major.

Still, considering that there were a lot of factors going against them, it was a fair result. But sooner or later, changes were coming for the team and they know. Now, we know what Cloud9 is planning.

Flusha, the legendary Swedish Major champion, decided to step-out from Cloud9 and CSGO overall for the time being. Golden, who had to leave for medical reasons is back. Zellsis, the temporary replacement, is now out of C9 and in his place, the team reportedly is looking at SuNNy.

What to expect from this possible European Cloud9?

While Cloud9 tried to go European last year, just now they finally hit the old continent. Still, they are a very promising European team now. SuNNy, who was Mousesports’ star player is now under their ranks and will certainly bring a lot of firepower with him.

More than this, Cloud9 finally has a proper leader as Golden returned from his medical leave. With his situation cleared, he should be able to finally bring his team to the top. After all, they have the talent necessary for it.

It’s a shame though that we couldn’t see more of Zellsis. While it’s reasonable as to why Cloud9 let him go, he could be one talent to look forward in the future. Still, he has proven himself and could be a useful piece for a team like compLexity or Rogue.

Flusha also had a very interesting place in Cloud9 but it was his decision to step-out and it’s completely understandable as to why. Cloud9 has ran out of time and talents like ‘Autimatic’ can’t be wasted anymore.

This is another move that is pretty advantageous. Zellsis was promising but not ready as SuNNy is. Flusha motivation was decreasing and he needed sometime out, while Golden can finally gives C9 their so needed leadership.

ScreaM and Draken start their new roster

While without a definite organization backing them, ScreaM and Draken are the headlines for a new European team. Featuring Ex6tenz, HS and hampus along them, there is some anticipation regarding what this can do under a proper organization.

However, their initial results are less than favorable as ScreaM, the player that should be one of their stars aren’t performing consistently as expected.

Still, there’s some promise with this team. Ex6tenz needs time to work out a formation that works for all his players after all. The biggest problem with this lineup is how inconsistent all those players can be, and it will be a hard task to make it work.

Shall Ex6tenz make it works though, then we can be ScreaM and Ex6tenz getting close to a top 20 by the middle of this year.

Norway restarts their take on CSGO

Rumors regarding a full Norwegian lineup have been roaming for more than one year by now. However, only now we are seeing what all this is all about.

Nordavind announced early last week that they will be bringing the veteran RUBINO, ex-North player and cromen, who stood for olofmeister in FaZe last year to headline their new lineup.

Along those known players, Nordavind introduced ‘Hallzerk’ and ‘Radifaction’ as the young stars of this endeavor. To complete this roster, however, ‘TENZKI’, a Danish player will round-up the ranks.

Nordavind however isn’t expecting success right off the bat, which is always a good thing. According to an AMA held in Reddit last week, their objective is to be amongst HLTV top 30 teams by the end of the year. A very reasonable objective.

The moves that should’ve happened, but apparently didn’t

While Cloud9, Mousesports, G2 and NRG all needed to make roster changes, they weren’t the only ones. More specifically, we’re talking about the Danish scene.

As Astralis reign isn’t coming to an end anytime soon, the lower Danish scene is in shambles. North and OpTic didn’t make to the Major for a good reason. Tricked and the ex-Fragsters squad isn’t doing any better too. There’s a lot wrong with the current Danish scene, excluding Astralis, obviously.

While it’s somewhat understandable for North to give ‘cadiaN’ a bit more of time, with a new coach, OpTic had a single good result for the entirety of 2018. Snappi isn’t working and JUGi is disappointing.

WESG, ECS Season VII and BLAST São Paulo are starting soon

For March, players will have quite a busy calendar, no matter what level their teams be in. With WESG 2018 and ECS Season VII starting this week, BLAST São Paulo in two weeks and StarSeries VII to end the month, there will be many matches to watch.

With team are you looking forward the most to see in action? Let us know below!

In this article

My name is Marcos, I have been following the CSGO pro scene since 2015 but really got into in following games and pro teams in 2016. Used to bet a lot, stopped a bit but never stopped following the esports scene. I'm a student right now so I got a lot of time to keep with it and discover new things.